


Side Effects May Include (The Radiated Remix)

by Chaerring



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bruce has to explain the other side effects of his exposure to gamma radiation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Effects May Include (The Radiated Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeebuddha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeebuddha/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Side Effects May Include](https://archiveofourown.org/works/418054) by [coffeebuddha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeebuddha/pseuds/coffeebuddha). 



> Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine.
> 
> Thank you so much to Coffeebuddha for giving me permission to remix her wonderful piece.
> 
> Another enormous thanks to TheGreatSporkWielder for beta-ing. This one was a tough job.

Bruce can't believe he's had a girlfriend for months. A month is a fairly lengthy unit of measure and Bruce has been with Darcy for many months. It is something he has a hard time wrapping his head around. It isn't perfect, by any means, but in some ways, for him, that makes it better. Darcy yells at him sometimes, slams doors and doesn't run away screaming when he yells back. She frustrates him beyond belief sometimes, but it is never anything that makes him scared. Somehow apart from the general worry he has at anyone's proximity, he never has to worry extra about her getting too close or making him too frustrated.

Being with Darcy is more than Bruce could ever have dreamed of. He is happy. Honestly happy and content with his life, with her. It is something to marvel at. He hasn't been so happy since before the lab accident with Betty. Afterwards, things had changed. Betty had still cared for him, and he for her, but he had become a different man in a single instance, and had no longer known himself well enough to be with anyone, no matter how much he had cared for them. That wasn't even taking into account the difficulties her father had presented them at every turn and her torn loyalties between them.

Darcy is completely different from Betty. She is younger than him and has such a different perspective on life. She isn't a genius in the way that science and math demand, but that doesn’t matter because she manages to understand and point out things to him that he wouldn't have noticed or been able to decipher in a million years. Every minute he spends with her is refreshing, new, and just so damn wonderful. He can't believe it every time he wakes up and she is still there, hasn’t disappeared, leaving him a note saying she couldn't be with a monster any longer.

There is nothing more he wants than to spend as much time as he can exactly as they are, naked and curled together, not minding in the least the way lingering sweat makes their skin tacky.

“Do you ever think about, you know, the future?”

He blames the distraction the warm curves of her body against his create for the way he pauses in stroking her hair and hesitates to answer. She wiggles pleasantly in his arms and he resumes his ministrations, loving the soft silken slide of her hair through his fingers as he quickly thinks about the question.

“The future..."

It was something he should be able to answer for her immediately, and he feels bad that he can’t, but since the accident, the future isn’t something he ever gives much thought to. He hums, stalling, and then quickly decides to tell her his exact thoughts. She always appreciates that more, anyways.

“It’s still strange to think I’m going to be able to have one, to be honest.”

He's a little surprised when her grip tightens on him and she responds immediately. 

“You can,” Her lips press against his jaw and his heart clenches at the simple affection in her movements. “You can have anything you want. You know that, right?”

He can’t. Not anything, but he is beginning to see that he can have a lot more things than he had ever thought he could, and that was thanks to her. What he wants at the moment is to kiss her, to take what she was offering to him. It is so easy, just a matter of tightening his fingers in her richly colored hair and tilting her head back a little so that he can feel the softness of her lips against his.

“I’m starting to get the idea."

He revels in the way he can breathe the same air she does and the insatiable spark that lights up her eyes as he does. It is a spark that says she wants _him_ , Bruce Banner of all people. He closes his eyes for a moment as he feels her fingers play through the hair on his chest and her lips kiss the joint of his arm and chest where she knows he is sensitive. 

“Good. That’s really good.”

He finds his lips stretched wide in a grin. They've been doing that more often lately, he's noticed.

“I think so."

It's easy enough to let the grin stick when Darcy's fingers begin to trace it lightly, as though she's testing its strength.

“So this future you’re starting to let yourself think about, what all do you think is going to be a part of it?”

Bruce had hoped she would stop when he conceded he was beginning to think of a future, but he should have known better. He starts to answer her question with the easy things. The things he wants to stay constant, even if he hasn't really acknowledged that desire for himself before now.

“Well, there’s you..." 

The delighted look on her face and the way she snuggles up closer to him makes him ridiculously glad he put her first in his list. Because he can, because he knows she'll let him, he pulls his arm a little tighter around her.

“And there’s the team.”

“Kids?”

Her voice is soft, so soft he thinks he imagined the word, and his instinctive reaction to recoil from the mention of children is silly and he shouldn't have had it. Then he feels her fingers on his side clench tightly and hears her voice again, louder this time.

“Forget it. That was stupid, just ignore that. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

Bruce can’t ignore it, though. He needs to explain to her why he has reacted the way he has. Darcy needs to know that it isn’t that he doesn’t want children. It is simply that there is a reason he can’t have them. He kisses her, to stop her protest, and because he wants to. It might not be an option after he explains. 

“It’s not that.”

It isn’t stupid at all. He wants children, wants children with her. It is a staggering desire now that she mentions it. Bruce wants so much for Darcy to be the mother of his children that it hurts. She would be a wonderful mother.

Her hand on his cheek and her voice brings him out of his thoughts.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Bruce takes the statement for what it is. Darcy's giving him an out, a way to take back what he has just said and pretend she'd never brought the question up. He knows she won't ask again. She'll leave the matter alone and he'll never have to tell her even though she deserved to know. He knows it is better to bite the bullet and tell her now rather than try and confess it later. If he keeps quiet it will simply eat at him until he gives in.

He realizes that he isn't so much concerned about Darcy believing he is a lesser man for it, or whatever nonsense other people believe about infertility, but that if she wants children, her own children, she might want a man that could give them to her the old fashioned way. That, however, is the risk he will have to take to be honest with her.

“That sort of thing...” 

He can feel his face wrinkle up as he stalls one last time. 

“It might not be _possible_ anymore.”

Watching Darcy frown, he realizes it would figure that she wouldn't understand the way he put it the first time.

"Darcy."

He sighs and threads his fingers back into her hair like they had been earlier, taking comfort in her continued proximity while he can.

“I was exposed to a lot of gamma radiation. That sort of thing--it tends to have side effects.”

“Yeah, we’ve all seen your smashier side."

He almost groans in frustration as he feels her fingers gently touching his neck. She is going to make him say it. Make him explain that the gamma radiation hasn't simply given him The Other Guy, but might have also permanently ruined his chances of passing on his genetics. He hasn't tested it for sure, hasn't tried to father a child, but the tests he had run on himself back when he had the chance were fairly conclusive. 

" _Other_ side effects."

He looks away from her face and clears his throat before he gives in and gets specific. He doesn’t want to see her reaction.

"Of the fertility variety."

"Oh," she says, not even a word, just a breath and Bruce has no clue what that means.

He wants to move, to get up and leave, but he's promised himself that he is done running. Darcy's leg slides between his own and takes away his choice. He's not going to leave her if she's keeping him there.

Instead, he tries to defuse the situation with words. This time it is his turn to give her a way out. He waves his hand through the air to satisfy his need to move and feels more than vaguely out of control as he babbles.

“And I get that that’s not something you signed on for, I completely understand that, and it’s fine if you can’t or don’t want--"

“Stop."

Darcy cuts him off with just a word and he quiets himself, waiting for her verdict.

“There are a lot of things in my life right now that I didn’t ‘sign on for’. Thor alone has entire subcategories devoted to all the ways he’s sent my life in ways I didn’t expect. And you know what?”

He doesn't realize the question's not rhetorical until she prods his side.

"What?"

“I don’t care. I. Don’t. Care. If I can roll with other worlds and super soldiers and Natasha’s attempts at pancakes, I can more than roll with this. The only reason this even rates at all on my 'Things I Should Freak Out About' chart is because it's upsetting you.” 

Her lips brush his, then his forehead, and he finally feels something in his chest start to unwind. Then she continues.

“Yeah, I want kids someday if I’m with someone who wants that too, but we’ll figure it out, okay? So don’t freak.”

Bruce can hardly register her words and he _knows_ his grip on her hip is hard enough to cause her discomfort, if not actual pain, but he can't bring himself to loosen it. Darcy isn't writing him off or leaving him. She wants to solve the problem together. She is using plural pronouns.

"We?"

Bruce has to be sure he hasn't heard her incorrectly, but if the way she is moving his arm around and settling against him is any indication, his question is superfluous. 

"Yes. _We_ will."

He can hear the conviction in her voice, and if there is anything at all he knows about Darcy, it is how hard she is to stop when she puts her mind to something. Bruce finally lets himself consider the possibilities. He can rerun the tests on himself. He'll have more time now and better access to materials, and even if the results are bad they will have other options. 

Bruce thinks of India, and standing over a cradle, telling a spy that he didn't get what he wanted. Then he slowly and surely begins to let go of that thought and relaxes under Darcy's warm weight. He wants her, and she's his. That's an excellent start.

"I do, you know. I've always wanted kids."

Bruce keeps his voice soft, speaking over her head, afraid of saying it too loud, like the universe will hear him and conspire further against them. Then Darcy kisses his hand, simply and affectionately. 

"Okay," she says, just as simply and he smiles.

“Tony _never_ gets to babysit, though. Not unless Steve is there to supervise.”

The instant conjuring of what a disaster that situation would be makes him laugh and releases the final knot of worry in his chest.

"Agreed."


End file.
